Michael Clemens

Economist who, with Jennifer Hunt, argued (NBER WP 23433, 2017; published ILR Review 72(4), 2019) that George Borjas's measured Mariel Boatlift wage effect is largely a compositional artifact of a 1980 Current Population Survey coverage change, not a real labor-market response. In a follow-up blog post (cgdev.org, 2017-05-30, not yet read directly in this vault), Clemens is reported by Borjas's own reply paper to have proposed a more flexible race-adjustment model that — on Borjas's own numbers — shrinks the Mariel wage effect toward zero in the March CPS data, shifting the debate from "is the effect spurious" to "which econometric adjustment for race is correct."

References

• claim-mariel-wage-effect-may-be-1980-census-methodology-artifact · claim-mariel-wage-effect-depends-on-race-adjustment-model-choice · claim-borjas-timing-rebuttal-mariel-black-share-flat-during-wage-drop · claim-clemens-race-interaction-argument-rests-on-miami-black-share-differing-from-control-cities · claim-clemens-mariel-effect-shrinks-progressively-as-race-adjustment-loosens

• Captures: 2026-07-09-hop-synthetic-control-mariel-boatlift, 2026-07-29-does-the-clemens-hunt-argument-that-borjass-mariel, 2026-08-19-which-race-adjustment-model-is-the-econometrically-correct

• 2026-08-20: the cgdev.org 2017-05-30 blog post (above, previously "not yet read directly in this vault") was read directly this session against a Wayback Machine capture — the first claim in this vault resting on Clemens's own words rather than Borjas's paraphrase of them. His own account grounds the race-interaction proposal in a specific empirical claim (Miami's sample is 63% black vs. under 10% in Borjas's control cities) and reports the Mariel effect shrinking progressively, not in one step, as the race adjustment loosens (claim-clemens-race-interaction-argument-rests-on-miami-black-share-differing-from-control-cities, claim-clemens-mariel-effect-shrinks-progressively-as-race-adjustment-loosens).